


love that fills the shape of its container

by TheAndromedaRecord



Series: Avatar!Tim [2]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Body Horror, Corruption!Tim, Gen, Reconciliation, Wasps, canon-typical corruption stuff, tim dies at the end
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:41:02
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,407
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24012238
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheAndromedaRecord/pseuds/TheAndromedaRecord
Summary: Tim itches.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims & Tim Stoker, Martin Blackwood & Tim Stoker, Sasha James & Tim Stoker
Series: Avatar!Tim [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1731190
Comments: 36
Kudos: 86
Collections: Tim Stoker Appreciation Week





	love that fills the shape of its container

**Author's Note:**

> yeeehaw!!! this one's for tim week—find the blog @tim-stoker-appreciation-week.tumblr.com  
> one of these days i'll write the other 12 fics

Tim itches.

That’s normal, of course, even if his wounds weren’t caused by probably-supernatural worms. It’s normal for his wounds to itch as they scab and heal. It’s normal for his hands to twitch toward his bandages, aching to peel them back and itch and scratch and tear until his wounds bleed freely again. The worms were so fat and plump before they died, and his scars are the size of dimes. He feels like the tunnels under the Institute–like he’s hollow, like he’s filled with winding passageways through every part of his body. The emptiness hurts.

He sits in front of the mirror and reminds himself there were only thirty-two holes, and the worms didn’t get more than a worm-length into him. 

That doesn’t change the fact that Tim itches. There’s something sick squirming in his gut, and he’s convinced it’s a worm. He knows it isn’t. They got all thirty-two worms.

Tim itches.

He’s always itched a little. It’s part of why he greets everyone with a smile and tries desperately to make people like him. It was okay when he had Danny. When he had Danny, he had someone to talk about video games with who didn’t stare at him like he was something shameful. When he had Danny, he had family. Someone who understood him. But now no one understands him—Jon used to, he used to be the same, but now Jon’s paranoid and suspicious and Tim itches. Martin keeps giving him odd looks, but he won’t say anything, because Martin doesn’t want to acknowledge that something is wrong. 

He’s so damn lonely. He’s got friends—Sasha is a friend, but her friendship feels hollow, somehow. Martin is a friend, but he feels separated from everyone by a wave of fog. Jon is…Jon was a friend, once. Everyone Tim knows has either left or isn’t enough. They aren’t enough. He needs something to fill the labyrinth of tunnels.

Tim’s chest itches, like something’s fluttering beneath it. Probably just his heart. He doesn’t scratch it—he tried scratching it once, and he kept scratching until he drew blood without even noticing and only stopped because Martin walked in. 

Tim keeps itching. There’s a wasp’s nest in the attic of his house. He has an exterminator remove it immediately.

Apparently, wasps can use a variety of navigation techniques to return to their home. Tim doesn’t really have a home. Just a house. He doesn’t have any family, or any real friends, and he longs so desperately to connect with someone. To love again. He thought maybe Martin and Jon and Sasha could be something like that, but he sees now it was a stupid hope. There is no human left alive who will offer Tim the companionship he craves.

If Tim were a wasp, he’d quickly go mad. Most wasps cannot survive alone. But then, wasps don’t have to be alone. Tim sits at his desk amid coworkers who don’t say anything that needs to be said, and he longs for a hive. His heart hurts desperately. It’s hollow, and hollow structures have no integrity. It’s only a matter of time before it collapses in on itself.

Tim’s house is so terribly quiet. He always has to have music playing, just like he always has to have a pen in hand. He wishes his house weren’t so quiet. He needs a lot of sensory stimulation, after all.

* * *

Tim’s chest keeps roiling. Martin can’t stand to be in the same room as him—he always makes his excuses to leave.

Tim confronts Martin about it, pulls him into Document Storage.

“Why have you been avoiding me?” he demands.

Martin stares at him like a deer caught in the headlights. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”  
“Every time I walk in, you find an excuse to leave. You’re almost as bad as Jon.”

Martin scowls. “Jon is—he’s just dealing with things, okay?”

“We’re all dealing with things. I got eaten just the same as him. You don’t see me stalking people.” 

“Why do you care if I avoid you?” Martin snaps. “I know you think I don’t solve anything.”

Tim stares at him. Martin is like an alien species at this point. 

“I like your tea,” he finally says, because he doesn’t know what else to say.

Martin wraps his arms around himself, suddenly looking very scared.

“What if they come back?” he whispers. “I…I don’t think they’re gone, and just being around people is hard, because what if they’re a hive, and…and I smell them sometimes, Tim. That musty smell. Never when I’m alone, though.”

“They’re not coming back,” Tim replies. His chest twists and writhes.

* * *

Jon understood him, and now Jon is his enemy. 

When Jon is revealed for the murderer he is, Tim cries his eyes out in front of the bathroom mirror that night. He had hoped for so much. 

Sasha is probably dead. Jon is a murderer. 

Tim should feel horribly alone, but he doesn’t. He unbuttons his shirt and sees the shape of writhing things crawling beneath his skin. He is scared of them. He places a hesitant hand over his chest and feels them squirming. He loves them.

Tim is so terribly frightened, but the fear is comforting. He’s feeling something. The fear is grounding. It’s okay to be frightened. The fear is so much better than the hollow emptiness that’s stayed with him for so long.

“I didn’t want it to be worms,” he whispers. “But it’s okay.”

His skin splits and his chest flutters with dry heat and Tim passes out on the bathroom floor.

* * *

Tim wakes up to a comforting buzz and tickles all over his body. They’re pleasant. Someone is singing—it’s the buzz, he thinks. The buzz is a song and it is beautiful and Tim will never need to listen to any other music again. Tim no longer feels his chest roiling with wet and squirming things. Instead, he feels dry fluttering in the space where his heart should be. 

Tim opens his eyes and sits up. There are wasps all over him. 

He stands up and looks in the mirror. Each of his pockmark scars aren’t bleeding—they’ve turned into coaster-size holes, revealing the pulpy mass within him. He isn’t human anymore, and he is scared. The wasps crawl in and out of him, hard at work, buzzing cheerily in their wonderful song. He is a home for them, and they love him. They will protect him. He is scared of them. They would never hurt him, and he is scared of them.

The fear is wonderful. It’s heady and enticing. Tim is who he’s supposed to be.

* * *

Wasps sting those who hurt their hive. Used to be, Tim was alone. Information was his only asset. But now? He’s full of things as angry as him, chattering friends who whisper that he makes a home for their fury. The wasps have his back. They will protect him with that their lives. 

Sasha is dead, and the hive screams in pain every time he thinks of her.

* * *

Wasps are awfully good at finding things, especially people who are afraid of the things like Tim. 

He finds Jon staying at a friend’s flat. He waits until she leaves before he knocks on the door.

“Who is it?” Jon calls from the other side of the door.

“It’s me,” Tim replies. “It’s Tim.”

“Tim?” He hears movement from inside. “How did you find me?”

“C’mon, boss. You know how good I am at research.”

The wasp wings buzz like laughter. 

“Why are you here?” Jon demands.

“I’m here to kill you,” Tim says as some of the wasps start to crawl in through the cracked window, “for what you did to Sasha.”

“I didn’t kill her,” Jon insists. “I—Tim, Sasha’s been dead for a year, a thing replaced her.”

Tim laughs, and the wasps laugh with him.

“We’re friends, Tim,” Jon says softly. “I-I thought…”

“I don’t need you,” Tim hisses. He doesn’t need Jon. He doesn’t need anyone. He doesn’t have to lose anyone ever again. He won’t be alone ever again. The wasps crawl over his skin, frenzied and dancing. The wasps in the flat are in sight of Jon. 

“Tim,” Jon pleads, but it isn’t really a plea. It’s an apology, a resignation, and in it is every night out, every book borrowed and passed between their houses, every joke that slotted right into the shared asynchronicities of their minds, every laughing kiss shared over a bottle of wine.

Jon doesn’t have a hive, and Tim’s heart is suddenly stabbed with a slender blade of pity. Jon must be so lonely, so very lonely. Maybe Tim won’t kill him after all. 

“Tim,” Jon says sharply, “these wasps are yours, aren’t they?”

“I remember back when you were one of my closest friends,” Tim says distantly. “More than a friend, even.” He swallows, and his throat is dry with wasp wings. “I thought I loved you.”

“Oh,” Jon whispers, and Tim can hear him sit down against the door. 

“It was ridiculous, of course,” Tim continues. “I could never love you or Sasha or Danny or Martin or anyone else. What’s the damn point of loving anyone outside of yourself?” He laughs, a quick jackal’s cry. “If I had loved you, you probably would have left or died. Well, you left anyway.” The wasps creep onto Jon’s pant leg. “So I suppose it doesn’t really matter.”

“So, what, I take a few pictures of your home and you—“

“My home? My fucking home? I didn’t have one, Jon. I had a house. There’s a difference. Now? Now I am a home.”

“Tim, I’m so sorry. God…I’m so sorry.”

“So you admit you killed her.”

“No! I didn’t kill Sasha. But I didn’t want this, I’m so sorry it went this far, I’m so sorry.” 

“I don’t want your apologies.”

“Then what do you want?” Jon says. _What can I give you?_ Jon doesn’t say, but Tim’s known him long enough to hear it.

“You don’t have a home, Jon,” Tim says, and in that moment it doesn’t really matter why Sasha is dead. “But you can be a home.”

The wasps crawl under Jon’s pant cuffs, creeping along his skin. 

“I don’t want that,” Jon tells him. “Can we…can we talk about it? Will you kill me if I open the door?”

The wasps could have flown in and stung Jon without Tim saying a word. Jon could already be dead. So why isn’t he? Why is Tim too weak to protect his hive? The wasps buzz and buzz and buzz and Tim is so scared. He’s scared of what will happen if Jon opens the door. He’s scared that Jon won’t die. He’s scared that Jon will die. All he knows is what the hive wants. The hive wants to create a new home for a new hive, and won’t Jon love finally being a home?

The knob turns, and Jon opens the door, with wasps still lurking against his leg. He looks like hell, and Tim’s first instinct is to hug him. But that’s an instinct left by a heart long since hollowed, and there’s nothing left to overpower the insects that swarm inside it. 

“What happened to you?” Jon whispers.

“I’m surprised you didn’t notice,” Tim replies dully. “I guess you were just looking for murder evidence, huh? Not loneliness. Not change.”

Jon reaches out a hand, then withdraws it as the wasps raise their wings threateningly.

“It’s all right,” Tim says, surprising himself. “I used to want connection so desperately. But I’m not missing it anymore. Even Sasha couldn’t give me this.” He places a hand on his chest and feels the resonant constant buzz of his bones.

“I’m so sorry,” Jon says again, and Tim frowns. This isn’t supposed to happen. Jon is supposed to be scared. He’s supposed to be repulsed, uncomprehending, angry. He’s not part of the hive, after all. How could he be anything but hostile? The wasps hum reassuringly in his ribcage, filling every space that was once painfully empty. But there are spaces that even the wasps can’t fill, and those are the spaces that thrum in traitorous longing when Tim looks into Jon’s eyes.

“Come with me,” Tim says. “You’ve always been waspish, you know. I think you’d take well to it.”

Jon shakes his head and grips the doorframe. Tim takes a step forward, and Jon flinches.

“I don't want that,” Jon tells him. “I’m sorry, Tim. I-I-I can’t have the….” He gestures to the pinprick scars across his face. They used to share those scars. But Jon’s have not reached their apotheosis.

Tim doesn’t feel the sting of rejection. How could he? He is whole, filled, loved by the things that make him their home. So why does he want so desperately for the wasps to take Jon? Why does his paper-filled heart ache to think of Jon, alone, his holes plugged by scar tissue? 

He could take Jon. He could fill him with wasps and cradle his life in their wings. He could show Jon the love that Prentiss had been trying to share, the love that Tim had been chasing for years. He could turn Jon from an enemy to a friend. He could erase the stalking and the paranoia and the words that neither could take back. Everything could be perfect in a paper home of terrifying love. 

“Take care of yourself,” Tim says hoarsely. 

The wasps buzz in protest as he leaves.

* * *

Jon will never see Tim again.

Jon will find many wasps nests built in discarded mannequins, full of vicious stinging insects that attack and kill anyone but him and Martin. He will take statements about a gaunt and perforated man who gives the defenseless a seething hive of their own.

He will go on rare trips outside for lunch, and sometimes a wasp will land on his hand. It will explore its way up his arm and nestle almost lovingly in the crook of his neck. He will lend the wasps some sugar water, and send it on its way. 

He will find a wax museum filled with fire and paper pulp, and when the smoke clears and the wasps and plastic are all melted and blackened, there will be nothing left but a skull.


End file.
